Some plywood panels used in the construction industry, furniture industry, cabinet industry, and the like commonly include one or more plies of tropical hardwoods. One example of such a plywood panel is Lauan plywood. Lauan plywood is typically used for non-decorative applications such as flooring underlayment, internal or hidden portions of furniture and cabinetry, and the like. Lauan plywood and similar plywoods are a commodity product sold by lumber supply wholesalers and retailers. Traditionally, Lauan plywood panels and other similar plywood panels include one or more tropical hardwood plies produced from wood harvested from tropical forests located in tropical regions such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Such tropical forests have become increasingly vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmentally destructive tree harvesting practices. Such harvesting practices can lead to severe soil erosion, increased incidents of illegal logging, and poor soil fertility, for example.
For these reasons, substantial efforts are being made to significantly reduce or eliminate the importation and sale of products that contain tropical hardwoods harvested from endangered tropical forests. In particular, there is a demand for substitute wood products that include little or no wood from endangered tropical forests, and instead include wood from sustainable sources of wood (the term “sustainable source(s) of wood” is defined below). Accordingly, there is a need for hardwood plywood panels that include no tropical hardwoods from endangered tropical forests and instead include wood from one or more sustainable sources of wood. More specifically, there is a need for a simulated commodity tropical hardwood-based panel that includes no tropical hardwood from non-sustainable wood sources, yet has the visual appearance of the tropical hardwood panel that it replaces. Preferably, purchasers and users of such a simulated commodity tropical hardwood-based panel would have difficulty differentiating between the simulated commodity tropical hardwood-based panel and a commodity tropical hardwood-based panel that it replaces.